Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About elderberrywine

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Elder LOTR/Holmes fan girl/writer since forever.

elderberrywine's Reviews:

Beware the . . .What? Were-Cat?

Other Worlds: Peasants, Pilgrims, Spirits, Saints by Teffi

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cbr15bingo strange worlds If, one fine morning in Old Mother Russia, you are out for a ramble through the countryside, and you happen upon a beautiful but sad young woman sitting in a steam looking piteously in your direction, do not attempt to render her aid. The tears are a device to lure you to her, the reason she is sitting in the stream is because her bottom half is a fish, and it will not go well for you at all. Water spirits are […]

Nothing Says Different Times Like Tobacco Power Plays

The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde by Erle Stanley Gardner

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cbr15bingo Nostalgia You did what, Sergeant Holcomb?  You put Perry Mason and Della Street in separate holding cells, and then you had the both of them strip searched?  Oh, son, you just made a huge mistake.  That is so not on.  You are so going down. OK, let’s back up a bit.  Diane Regis, she with the shiner, has made her way to Mason’s office dressed in a fur coat and not much underneath.  Seems as though her employer’s step-son (she’s a radio actress, employed […]

Imagine Glasgow, but Make It North America

Aubrey McKee by Alex Pugsley

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cbr15bingo North America Aubrey is the protagonist in this coming of age tale, set in the early ‘70s.  I was definitely getting Catcher in the Rye vibes, I have to admit.  The timing isn’t all that far off, only about a decade or so later, but the setting is a far grittier port city than New York ever was – Halifax, Nova Scotia. Aubrey and his friends wander through their high school years with probably more drugs and more female members of the pack but […]

She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

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CBR15 Passport Siberia Now mystical and/or spooky circus is one of my favorite vibes, but it is the language of this book that sets it apart for me, ranging from an East End London lilt to wonderfully baroque proclamations a la P. T. Barnum at his most fulsome. The plot is based on a feminist twist of the Leda and the swan myth.  Fevvers, renowned aerialiste, is recounting her origin story in turn of the century London to a young American journalist.  At six two […]

Mind? Blown.

The Tree by Colin Tudge

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Well, I started this book knowing very little in the way of botany, and I feel compelled to point out the process of placing plants into various families is Seriously Bonkers, to use the scientific term.  The two biggest families are, in layman’s terms, the roses and the daisies.  But the roses also include grape vines, cabbages, oak trees, and rubber trees, while the daisies have carrots, coffee, ash trees, and olive trees for relatives.  Apparently it all has to do with DNA, but wow.  […]

You Can Call Me Fred, If You’re Nasty

Chéri and The End of Chéri by Colette

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CBR15 Passport France Talk about your groomers.  Fin du siècle France, and the world of the grandes horizontales.  Léa, the epitome of her genre, has taken on the son of one of her compatriots, to tutor him to please a future wife.  She is in her fifties, and he is but fifteen, but that is as it should be.  He is devastatingly beautiful, and his mother trusts her friend to bring him up to par for the matrimonial market, shall we say.  Alas. after six […]



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